


Trains In The Night

by pikablob



Category: Hilda (Cartoon), Infinity Train (Cartoon)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Families of Choice, Gen, Growing Up Together, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Unconventional Families, What-If, technically kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 03:56:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29620245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pikablob/pseuds/pikablob
Summary: Her neighbour is no help, a woman called Martha who takes one look at Johanna and sneers. She has a son; she claims he’s eight years old, but he looks far too small in his worn out thrift-shop clothes. Through the thin walls of her apartment Johanna hears Martha berating him, and him crying himself to sleep, and she makes a silent promise to look out for him.In which Johanna saves Simon from ever boarding the train, and Hilda grows up with an older brother looking out for her.
Relationships: Hilda & Johanna | Hilda's Mum (Hilda), Hilda (Hilda) & Simon Laurent, Johanna | Hilda's Mum & Simon Laurent
Comments: 16
Kudos: 49





	Trains In The Night

Johanna begins her twenties in a run-down apartment block on the outskirts of Trolberg, squeezed right up against the wall. It’s all she can afford; her parents want nothing to do with her and she wants nothing to do with them, ever again, but that leaves her adrift and without support. She keeps in touch with her grandfather, living alone in the wilderness, but he has little money to his name and she can’t stand the thought of being a burden, no matter how many times he offers her a place at his home.

So instead she carves out her space in this grimy housing development. She can’t work full time; Hilda is only a few months old, her blue hair short and fuzzy, and she cannot be left alone. So Johanna takes what graphic design work she can, drawing with her daughter on her lap, and just barely she scrapes by.

She can only afford the rent because her apartment overlooks the railway line. All day and night trains rattle past, whistles screaming and wheels clattering. Hilda adjusts to the noise long before she does. Sometimes an express comes past, shrieking like a lost soul; those trains are pulled by sleek electric engines, instead of hissing steam, and the windows of their grey cars glow a sickly green. They only come at night, and only rarely, but when they do Johanna does not sleep before dawn.

Her neighbour is no help, a woman called Martha who takes one look at Johanna and sneers. She has a son; she claims he’s eight years old, but he looks far too small in his worn out thrift-shop clothes. Through the thin walls of her apartment Johanna hears Martha berating him, and him crying himself to sleep, and she makes a silent promise to look out for him.

Johanna would have thought the opposite, but something about having so little makes generosity easy. She does what she can for the boy; she slips him sweets and canned food when they pass in the hall, she lets him talk her ear off about his mum and his worries and his life, and on one cruel night she holds him close when his mother temporarily kicks him out, and lets him cry into her arms.

But eventually her old grandfather dies, and his offer of a place to live in the wilderness comes again in his will, and Johanna can refuse it no longer. She gives the little neighbour boy everything she can, and she wishes him goodbye, and she packs her meagre belongings and she takes Hilda and she runs to the wilderness.

Over the years she thinks less and less about him, as Hilda’s adventures take up more and more of her time. When eventually they move back to the city she does have a look, partly out of curiosity and partly out of guilt, but her old block has been declared unsafe and torn down, and she can find no trace of the little boy who always wore socks with his sandals.

* * *

But in another world, Johanna’s grandfather clings to life just a little longer. Hilda spends her first two years in that little apartment, reading old books and watching the trains go by and wishing she could adventure beyond the wall. She is a good child, and she knows not to disturb mummy while she works, and she abides their little life.

Johanna keeps a closer eye on the neighbour boy as he turns from eight to nine to ten. Gifts in the hallway and an open ear become dinners and a bed to sleep in on nights where Martha is out or drunk or threatening to take her anger out on her son. Eventually he spends as many nights with Johanna and Hilda as he does with his own mother.

Johanna lets him hold Hilda, eventually; he cradles her in his skinny arms with delicate reverence. He’s there to see the blue haired girl sit up for the first time unaided, to take her first steps, and to say her first word. And one night on the couch, with Hilda asleep on her lap and the boy asleep at her side, Johanna realises that she has more than one child. The express passes under her window that night.

Eventually, though, Johanna’s grandfather’s heart gives out. Her door opens and she plans to take her exit, packing everything she has and driving for the hills. The little boy comes to her in floods of tears, begging her not to leave him, terrified of his mother, and amid his broken sobs he admits her cruelty extends beyond just shouted words and missed dinners. But Johanna cannot bear to live in this place of despair any longer, and she cannot subject Hilda to it anymore.

So that night, in the last car to leave Trolberg before the Safety Patrol lock the gates tight, is a family of three bound out for the wilderness. Johanna sits in the front, her knuckles white on the wheel; Hilda perches in a third-hand baby seat beside her, vibrating with excitement despite the late hour; and in the back seat, beside a pile of Johanna’s art supplies, his face tear-stained but his eyes full of hope, sits ten-year-old Simon Laurent.

* * *

The first few weeks in the wilderness are rough. Johanna has grown used to the routine of the city, to the rattle and shriek of trains and the hum of conversations and the creaking of apartment pipes. The house feels big and empty, and there are still signs of her grandfather’s presence everywhere, and she feels like she is intruding in a life she did not earn.

But more than that, Johanna worries. She lies awake at night in fear, because surely Martha must know what she has done? Surely there must be a missing persons report for Simon? She has visions of the Safety Patrol showing up at her door, dragging her son back to his cruel mother, and she can’t shake the feeling that she is being watched.

She doesn’t tell her children. Hilda is too young to understand, and Simon deserves a childhood without feeling guilty or afraid. But still Johanna sleeps with her grandfather’s shotgun under her bed, in case Martha tracks them down alone, and she has her escape plan memorised. She keeps both of her children indoors, for now; they watch the woffs go by from the cabin windows.

But in the end, it is not the Safety Patrol that Johanna needs to watch for. Hilda sleeps through it, but one night the whole house shakes with thunder. It would be easy to blame it on trolls, or passing giants, but Johanna knows that rhythm in her bones and it rips her awake and sets her heart racing. Because that is the rumble of a train.

She sees the green glare through the windows and she just _knows_ it has come for her son. She runs outside in her pajamas, barefoot, in time to see the express that has haunted her for so long waiting impatiently just outside. The door to one car is open, expectantly, and Simon is silhouetted in the glare as he stands, so small, on the threshold.

She calls out his name and he freezes; he looks back, tears running down his face, and for a moment she is sure he will board. She knows the old stories, the tales of the marra and the fae folk, and she _knows_ that she will never see him again if he takes that train’s cursed offer.

But he doesn’t. He hesitates, and takes a half-step back, and then she crosses the distance and scoops him up into her arms and holds him so tight that she’s scared she might crush him. And he just breaks, erupting into sobs in her arms as the train grows impatient behind them. And then he is hugging her too, holding on for dear life. And for the first time in his short life he calls someone his mom and means it.

All of his worries spill out there on the grass, in the green glare. He knows she is scared and he hates it, hates that he’s a burden, hates that ~~his mother~~ Martha might find him, hates that Johanna is worried on his behalf. The train offered him a way out, he says; a place where he could escape his birth mother’s wrath and no longer burden Johanna, but she shakes her head and holds him tighter still.

She tells Simon she loves him, that she wouldn’t trade him for anything, that she would rather worry about him now than lose him forever and that he will always be her son no matter what the world says. And as he cries more at her words the train lets out a mechanical sigh and departs, leaving them alone on the grass in front of the old house.

Simon sleeps in his mother’s arms that night, Hilda joining them when she wakes up, confused and concerned, a few hours later. And the next night, and the next; Simon keeps his room, but he doesn’t sleep a full night in it until his eleventh birthday is long passed.

* * *

Johanna lets her children roam more after that. Days turn into years and they both grow up, in their own ways; Hilda takes to the wilderness like she was born in it, always begging to be allowed out alone. Instead Johanna lets Simon watch over her. Johanna teaches him to paint and he takes up modelling, and soon his room is full of tiny wooden soldiers carved from sticks Hilda brings him. He takes a shine to writing too, crafting stories about a great explorer with blue hair who charts a fantasy world.

One day, when Simon is fourteen and his sister six, two becomes three. They come back to Johanna a mess; Hilda has skinned her knees and torn her sweater, and Simon’s hands are cut and grazed, but they are both grinning from ear to ear. In Hilda’s arms is a tiny, white-furred deerfox; she has already named it Twig. They both beg Johanna to let them keep it, and she can’t help but say yes.

Later, Simon admits to her that Hilda fell off a cliff that day, and Twig saved her life. She nearly grounds him forever on the spot before his sister speaks out on his behalf, claiming it was all her fault. Johanna lets them both off with a stern warning to be careful in the woods, and they play Dragon Panic long into the night.

Nobody ever comes looking for Simon; the only conclusion Johanna can reach is that Martha never cared enough to report him missing. She admits this to him quietly one night, and he holds her close and cries into her arms and admits he has hoped the same since that awful night with the train, so long ago. She is his mother, he insists, and she always will be, and that is enough for both of them.

* * *

Eventually, a giant steps on their home and they have to move back to Trolberg. Not before resolving their dispute with the elves, however; Hilda notes with amusement that one of the many charges the hidden folk laid at her feet was parking a train illegally across three entire districts of the Northern Counties. And so four becomes five, as Alfur Aldric joins the family and Hilda gets another older brother looking out for her.

Johanna finds a nice house, as far from the railway line as they can possibly get. Simon gets a part-time job working at a local electronics store, repairing old cassette mechanisms and radio sets, despite how many times she tells him he doesn’t have to. His earnings are enough that she can afford to work straight on commissions. Eventually she can afford to keep them afloat alone, and he uses his income to buy small figures for himself and gifts for his sister and mother.

In the end, Johanna can’t help her curiosity. She checks the Safety Patrol records at the library, and her hunch is proven; Simon Laurent was never reported missing. There is no sign of Martha anywhere, either. The old apartment block has long been torn down, and there are no records of her anywhere that Johanna is allowed to look. Eventually she caves and has Alfur send out an elf mail, but none of the clans have heard hide nor hair of her old neighbour either.

Hilda takes longer to adjust to the city than her brother. She chafes under school, and her first attempt at making friends nearly leads to chaos when the Great Raven almost fails to appear at the Bird Parade. But in the end, she too carves out a space.

She comes home one day with two friends: a girl named Frida, and a boy named David. She introduces Simon as _the best big brother in the world_ , and before long they all get on like a house on fire.

He shares David’s hatred of bugs (he had nightmares about cockroaches for years; Johanna was never sure why), and shares tips on how to repel them. And he and Frida talk for hours about some book series nobody else in the house has heard of (Johanna makes a mental note to get him the last book in the _Spirit Morph Saga_ for his birthday).

And eventually, five becomes six; Hilda drags a homeless nisse into their lives, and Johanna feels a strange deja-vu when Simon begs her to let Hilda’s new friend stay. But despite some misgivings and mistakes Tontu becomes a valued member of the household too.

And one night, when Hilda’s friends come round for a sleepover and Simon drags the entire household into a tabletop wargame that drags long into the evening (Frida, as it turns out, is a formidable tactician and has a rivalry with Johanna’s son that he neglected to tell her about), Johanna can’t help feeling warm as she looks over the scene. Because despite all the pain of a decade ago, her kids are alright, and she loves the people they’re growing up to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to [wallywestfest on tumblr](https://wallywestfest.tumblr.com/) for creating some amazing art for this fic!!


End file.
